Bootstrapping?

DislexiK · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:34 am Post subject: Bootstrapping?

Hi all, just installing Gentoo, thought I would try understand everything I am doing also, I mean you cannot understand what you're doing unless you learn specific parts, so I have a question:

What is bootstrapping exactly, now I know bootstrap is defined generally s setting up all I/O devices and loading the operating system, but what is bootstrapping.

From what it said on Gentoo.org doc files for the installation it is where you build all needed programs inorder to install gentoo base and allow for the base system to run correctly. So bootstrapping is where you compile the needed applications from source in order to increase your performance of your system even further?

So are the main apps such as compilers GCC (Whats that stand for btw?) used to build its self from source, and then installed again?

Thanks for your help

DislexiK
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avendesora · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:01 am Post subject:

That's the idea. The bootstrap phase in Gentoo re-builds the toolchain (gcc, binutils) and C library (glibc) from source on your system.
From there on, everything is built using only things you compiled yourself with your specific settings.

DislexiK · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:07 am Post subject:

Thats great thankyou, what do you mean by specific settings, do you have the ability to send configration (./config options) to your emerge in order to compile to specific locations for example for KDE I want it installed in: /opt, would I be able to send --prefix=/opt for KDE?

Kind Regards

DislexiK
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DislexiK DoT KoM - A Click Start To Becoming A GeeK
Linux, Networking, Hardware and Programming
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avendesora · Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:10 am Post subject:

In Gentoo, you control how things get built by USE flags and setting compiler options in your make.conf file.
You pretty much never need to override configure settings. (And kde will go in /usr/kde/<version> - not sure you can change that.)